.\" $NetBSD: ps.1,v 1.106.6.1 2018/04/12 13:42:48 martin Exp $ .\" .\" Copyright (c) 1980, 1990, 1991, 1993, 1994 .\" The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. .\" .\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without .\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions .\" are met: .\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. .\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the .\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. .\" 3. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors .\" may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software .\" without specific prior written permission. .\" .\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND .\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE .\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE .\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE .\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL .\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS .\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) .\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT .\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY .\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF .\" SUCH DAMAGE. .\" .\" @(#)ps.1 8.3 (Berkeley) 4/18/94 .\" .Dd December 2, 2016 .Dt PS 1 .Os .Sh NAME .Nm ps .Nd process status .Sh SYNOPSIS .Nm .Op Fl AaCcdehjlmrSsTuvwx .Op Fl k Ar key .Op Fl M Ar core .Op Fl N Ar system .Op Fl O Ar fmt .Op Fl o Ar fmt .Op Fl p Ar pid .Op Fl t Ar tty .Op Fl U Ar user .Op Fl W Ar swap .Nm .Fl L .Sh DESCRIPTION .Nm displays a header line followed by lines containing information about running processes. By default, the display includes only processes that have controlling terminals and are owned by your uid. The default sort order of controlling terminal and (among processes with the same controlling terminal) process .Tn ID may be changed using the .Fl k , Fl m , or .Fl r options. .Pp The information displayed for each process is selected based on a set of keywords (see the .Fl L , .Fl O , and .Fl o options). The default output format includes, for each process, the process' .Tn ID , controlling terminal, CPU time (including both user and system time), state, and associated command. .Pp The options are as follows: .Bl -tag -width XNXsystemXX .It Fl A Display information about all processes. This is equivalent to .Fl a Fl x . .It Fl a Display information about other users' processes as well as your own. Note that this does not display information about processes without controlling terminals. .It Fl C Change the way the CPU percentage is calculated by using a .Dq raw CPU calculation that ignores .Dq resident time (this normally has no effect). .It Fl c Do not display full command with arguments, but only the executable name. This may be somewhat confusing; for example, all .Xr sh 1 scripts will show as .Dq sh . .It Fl d Arrange processes into descendancy order and prefix each command with indentation text showing sibling and parent/child relationships. If either of the .Fl m and .Fl r options are also used, they control how sibling processes are sorted relative to each other. .It Fl e Display the environment as well. The environment for other users' processes can only be displayed by the super-user. .It Fl h Repeat the information header as often as necessary to guarantee one header per page of information. .It Fl j Print information associated with the following keywords: .Ar user , pid , ppid , pgid , sess , jobc , state , tt , time , and .Ar command . .It Fl k Ar key Sort the output using the space or comma separated list of keywords. Multiple sort keys may be specified, using any of the .Fl k , Fl m , or .Fl r options. The default sort order is equivalent to .Fl k Ar tdev,pid . .It Fl L List the set of available keywords. .It Fl l Display information associated with the following keywords: .Ar uid , pid , ppid , cpu , pri , nice , vsz , rss , wchan , state , .Ar tt , time , and .Ar command . .It Fl M Ar core Extract values from the specified core file instead of the running system. .It Fl m Sort by memory usage. This is equivalent to .Fl k Ar vsz . .It Fl N Ar system Extract the name list from the specified system instead of the default, .Dq Pa /netbsd . Ignored unless .Fl M is specified. .It Fl O Ar fmt Display information associated with the space or comma separated list of keywords specified. The .Fl O option does not suppress the default display; it inserts additional keywords just after the .Ar pid keyword in the default display, or after the .Ar pid keyword (if any) in a non-default display specified before the first use of the .Fl O flag. Keywords inserted by multiple .Fl O options will be adjacent. .Pp An equals sign .Pq Dq \&= followed by a customised header string may be appended to a keyword, as described in more detail under the .Fl o option. .It Fl o Ar fmt Display information associated with the space or comma separated list of keywords specified. Use of the .Fl o option suppresses the set of keywords that would be displayed by default, or appends to the set of keywords specified by other options. .Pp An equals sign .Pq Dq \&= followed by a customised header string may be appended to a keyword. This causes the printed header to use the specified string instead of the default header associated with the keyword. .Pp Everything after the first equals sign is part of the customised header text, and this may include embedded spaces .Pq Dq " " , commas .Pq Dq \&, , or equals signs .Pq Dq \&= . To specify multiple keywords with customised headers, use multiple .Fl o or .Fl O options. .Pp If all the keywords to be displayed have customised headers, and all the customised headers are entirely empty, then the header line is not printed at all. .It Fl p Ar pid Display information associated with the specified process .Tn ID . .It Fl r Sort by current CPU usage. This is equivalent to .Fl k Ar %cpu . .It Fl S Change the way the process time is calculated by summing all exited children to their parent process. .It Fl s Display one line for each LWP, rather than one line for each process, and display information associated with the following keywords: .Ar uid , pid , ppid , cpu , lid , nlwp , pri , nice , vsz , rss , .Ar wchan , lstate , tt , time , and .Ar command . .It Fl T Display information about processes attached to the device associated with the standard input. .It Fl t Ar tty Display information about processes attached to the specified terminal device. Use a question mark .Pq Dq \&? for processes not attached to a terminal device and a minus sign .Pq Dq - for processes that have been revoked from their terminal device. .It Fl U Ar user Display processes belonging to the specified user, given either as a user name or a uid. .It Fl u Display information associated with the following keywords: .Ar user , pid , %cpu , %mem , vsz , rss , tt , state , start , time , and .Ar command . The .Fl u option implies the .Fl r option. .It Fl v Display information associated with the following keywords: .Ar pid , state , time , sl , re , pagein , vsz , rss , lim , tsiz , .Ar %cpu , %mem , and .Ar command . The .Fl v option implies the .Fl m option. .It Fl W Ar swap Extract swap information from the specified file instead of the default, .Dq Pa /dev/drum . Ignored unless .Fl M is specified. .It Fl w Use 132 columns to display information instead of the default, which is your window size. If the .Fl w option is specified more than once, .Nm will use as many columns as necessary without regard to your window size. .It Fl x Also display information about processes without controlling terminals. .El .Pp A complete list of the available keywords are listed below. Some of these keywords are further specified as follows: .Bl -tag -width indent .It Ar %cpu The CPU utilization of the process; this is a decaying average over up to a minute of previous (real) time. Since the time base over which this is computed varies (since processes may be very young) it is possible for the sum of all .Tn %CPU fields to exceed 100%. .It Ar %mem The percentage of real memory used by this process. .It Ar flags The flags (in hexadecimal) associated with the process as in the include file .In sys/proc.h : .Bl -column P_NOCLDSTOP P_NOCLDSTOP compact .It Dv "P_ADVLOCK" Ta No "0x00000001 process may hold a POSIX advisory lock" .It Dv "P_CONTROLT" Ta No "0x00000002 process has a controlling terminal" .It Dv "P_NOCLDSTOP" Ta No "0x00000008 no" Dv SIGCHLD No when children stop .It Dv "P_PPWAIT" Ta No "0x00000010 parent is waiting for child to exec/exit" .It Dv "P_PROFIL" Ta No "0x00000020 process has started profiling" .It Dv "P_SELECT" Ta No "0x00000040 selecting; wakeup/waiting danger" .It Dv "P_SINTR" Ta No "0x00000080 sleep is interruptible" .It Dv "P_SUGID" Ta No "0x00000100 process had set id privileges since last exec" .It Dv "P_SYSTEM" Ta No "0x00000200 system process: no sigs or stats" .It Dv "P_TIMEOUT" Ta No "0x00000400 timing out during sleep" .It Dv "P_TRACED" Ta No "0x00000800 process is being traced" .It Dv "P_WAITED" Ta No "0x00001000 debugging process has waited for child" .It Dv "P_WEXIT" Ta No "0x00002000 working on exiting" .It Dv "P_EXEC" Ta No "0x00004000 process called" Xr execve 2 .It Dv "P_OWEUPC" Ta No "0x00008000 owe process an addupc() call at next ast" .\" the routine addupc is not documented in the man pages .It Dv "P_NOCLDWAIT" Ta No "0x00020000 no zombies when children die" .It Dv "P_32" Ta No "0x00040000 32-bit process (used on 64-bit kernels)" .It Dv "P_BIGLOCK" Ta No "0x00080000 process needs kernel ``big lock'' to run" .It Dv "P_INEXEC" Ta No "0x00100000 process is exec'ing and cannot be traced" .El .It Ar lim The soft limit on memory used, specified via a call to .Xr setrlimit 2 . .It Ar lstart The exact time the command started, using the .Dq \&%c format described in .Xr strftime 3 . .It Ar nice The process scheduling increment (see .Xr setpriority 2 ) . .It Ar rss the real memory (resident set) size of the process (in 1024 byte units). .It Ar start The time the command started. If the command started less than 24 hours ago, the start time is displayed using the .Dq %l:%M%p format described in .Xr strftime 3 . If the command started less than 7 days ago, the start time is displayed using the .Dq %a%p format. Otherwise, the start time is displayed using the .Dq %e%b%y format. .It Ar state The state is given by a sequence of letters, for example, .Dq Tn RNs . The first letter indicates the run state of the process: .Pp .Bl -tag -width indent -compact .It D Marks a process in device or other short term, uninterruptible wait. .It I Marks a process that is idle (sleeping interruptibly for longer than about .Dv MAXSLP (default 20) seconds). .It O Marks a process running on a processor. .It R Marks a runnable process, or one that is in the process of creation. .It S Marks a process that is sleeping interruptibly for less than about .Dv MAXSLP (default 20) seconds. .It T Marks a stopped process. .It U Marks a suspended process. .It Z Marks a dead process that has exited, but not been waited for (a .Dq zombie ) . .El .Pp Additional characters after these, if any, indicate additional state information: .Pp .Bl -tag -width indent -compact .It + The process is in the foreground process group of its control terminal. .It - The LWP is detached (can't be waited for). .It \*[Lt] The process has raised .Tn CPU scheduling priority. .It a The process is using scheduler activations (deprecated). .It E The process is in the process of exiting. .It K The process is a kernel thread or system process. .It l The process has multiple LWPs. .It N The process is niced (has reduced .Tn CPU scheduling priority) (see .Xr setpriority 2 ) . .It s The process is a session leader. .It V The process is suspended during a .Xr vfork 2 . .It X The process is being traced or debugged. .El .It Ar tt An abbreviation for the pathname of the controlling terminal, if any. The abbreviation consists of the two letters following .Dq Pa /dev/tty or, for the console, .Dq co . This is followed by a .Dq \&- if the process can no longer reach that controlling terminal (i.e., it has been revoked). .It Ar wchan The event (an address in the system) on which a process waits. When printed numerically, the initial part of the address is trimmed off and the result is printed in hex, for example, 0x80324000 prints as 324000. .El .Pp When printing using the .Ar command keyword, a process that has exited and has a parent that has not yet waited for the process (in other words, a zombie) is listed as .Dq Aq defunct , and a process which is blocked while trying to exit is listed as .Dq Aq exiting . .Pp .Nm will try to locate the processes' argument vector from the user area in order to print the command name and arguments. This method is not reliable because a process is allowed to destroy this information. The .Ar ucomm (accounting) keyword will always contain the real command name as contained in the process structure's .Va p_comm field. .Pp If the command vector cannot be located (usually because it has not been set, as is the case of system processes and/or kernel threads) the command name is printed within square brackets. .Pp To indicate that the argument vector has been tampered with, .Nm will append the real command name to the output within parentheses if the basename of the first argument in the argument vector does not match the contents of the real command name. .Pp In addition, .Nm checks for the following two situations and does not append the real command name parenthesized: .Bl -tag -width indent .It -shellname The login process traditionally adds a .Sq - in front of the shell name to indicate a login shell. .Nm will not append parenthesized the command name if it matches with the name in the first argument of the argument vector, skipping the leading .Sq - . .It daemonname: current-activity Daemon processes frequently report their current activity by setting their name to be like .Dq daemonname: current-activity . .Nm will not append parenthesized the command name, if the string preceding the .Sq \&: in the first argument of the argument vector matches the command name. .El .Sh KEYWORDS The following is a complete list of the available keywords and their meanings. Several of them have aliases (keywords which are synonyms). .Pp .Bl -tag -width groupnames -compact .It Ar %cpu percentage CPU usage (alias .Ar pcpu ) .It Ar %mem percentage memory usage (alias .Ar pmem ) .It Ar acflag accounting flag (alias .Ar acflg ) .It Ar comm command (the argv[0] value) .It Ar command command and arguments (alias .Ar args ) .It Ar cpu short-term CPU usage factor (for scheduling) .It Ar cpuid CPU number the current process or lwp is running on. .It Ar ctime accumulated CPU time of all children that have exited .It Ar egid effective group id .It Ar egroup group name (from egid) .It Ar emul emulation name .It Ar etime elapsed time since the process was started, in the form .Li [[dd-]hh:]mm:ss .It Ar euid effective user id .It Ar euser user name (from euid) .It Ar flags the process flags, in hexadecimal (alias .Ar f ) .It Ar gid effective group id .It Ar group group name (from gid) .It Ar groupnames group names (from group access list) .It Ar groups group access list .It Ar inblk total blocks read (alias .Ar inblock ) .It Ar jobc job control count .It Ar ktrace tracing flags .It Ar ktracep tracing vnode .It Ar laddr kernel virtual address of the .Tn "struct lwp" belonging to the LWP. .It Ar lid ID of the LWP .It Ar lim memory use limit .It Ar lname descriptive name of the LWP .It Ar logname login name of user who started the process (alias .Ar login ) .It Ar lstart time started .It Ar lstate symbolic LWP state .It Ar ltime CPU time of the LWP .It Ar majflt total page faults .It Ar minflt total page reclaims .It Ar msgrcv total messages received (reads from pipes/sockets) .It Ar msgsnd total messages sent (writes on pipes/sockets) .It Ar nice nice value (alias .Ar ni ) .It Ar nivcsw total involuntary context switches .It Ar nlwp number of LWPs in the process .It Ar nsigs total signals taken (alias .Ar nsignals ) .It Ar nvcsw total voluntary context switches .It Ar nwchan wait channel (as an address) .It Ar oublk total blocks written (alias .Ar oublock ) .It Ar p_ru resource usage pointer (valid only for zombie) .It Ar paddr kernel virtual address of the .Tn "struct proc" belonging to the process. .It Ar pagein pageins (same as majflt) .It Ar pgid process group number .It Ar pid process .Tn ID .It Ar ppid parent process .Tn ID .It Ar pri scheduling priority .It Ar re core residency time (in seconds; 127 = infinity) .It Ar rgid real group .Tn ID .It Ar rlink reverse link on run queue, or 0 .It Ar rlwp number of LWPs on a processor or run queue .It Ar rss resident set size .It Ar rsz resident set size + (text size / text use count) (alias .Ar rssize ) .It Ar ruid real user .Tn ID .It Ar ruser user name (from ruid) .It Ar sess session pointer .It Ar sid session .Tn ID .It Ar sig pending signals (alias .Ar pending ) .It Ar sigcatch caught signals (alias .Ar caught ) .It Ar sigignore ignored signals (alias .Ar ignored ) .It Ar sigmask blocked signals (alias .Ar blocked ) .It Ar sl sleep time (in seconds; 127 = infinity) .It Ar start time started .It Ar state symbolic process state (alias .Ar stat ) .It Ar stime accumulated system CPU time .It Ar svgid saved gid from a setgid executable .It Ar svgroup group name (from svgid) .It Ar svuid saved uid from a setuid executable .It Ar svuser user name (from svuid) .It Ar tdev control terminal device number .It Ar time accumulated CPU time, user + system (alias .Ar cputime ) .It Ar tpgid control terminal process group .Tn ID .It Ar tsess control terminal session pointer .It Ar tsiz text size (in Kbytes) .It Ar tt control terminal name (two letter abbreviation) .It Ar tty full name of control terminal .It Ar uaddr kernel virtual address of the .Tn "struct user" belonging to the LWP. .It Ar ucomm name to be used for accounting .It Ar uid effective user .Tn ID .It Ar upr scheduling priority on return from system call (alias .Ar usrpri ) .It Ar user user name (from uid) .It Ar utime accumulated user CPU time .It Ar vsz virtual size in Kbytes (alias .Ar vsize ) .It Ar wchan wait channel (as a symbolic name) .It Ar xstat exit or stop status (valid only for stopped or zombie process) .El .Sh FILES .Bl -tag -width /var/run/kvm.db -compact .It Pa /dev special files and device names .It Pa /dev/drum default swap device .It Pa /var/run/dev.cdb /dev name database .It Pa /var/db/kvm.db system name list database .It Pa /netbsd default system name list .El .Sh SEE ALSO .Xr kill 1 , .Xr pgrep 1 , .Xr pkill 1 , .Xr sh 1 , .Xr w 1 , .Xr kvm 3 , .Xr strftime 3 , .Xr dev_mkdb 8 , .Xr pstat 8 .Sh HISTORY A .Nm utility appeared in .At v3 in section 8 of the manual. .Sh BUGS Since .Nm cannot run faster than the system and is run as any other scheduled process, the information it displays can never be exact.